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Eric Curl's Blog

As the city beat reporter, Eric Curl strives to tell informative and interesting stories about Savannah's government and the community it serves.

Posted March 20, 2013 04:40 pm - Updated March 20, 2013 04:50 pm

Audio of failed vote to fire Tybee's city manager

Here is the audio recording of the attempt on March 14 to fire Tybee Island City Manager Diane Schleicher, which ended up being rejected in a 4 to 3 vote.

There were a lot of rumors circulating about what took place during the vote, which was only witnessed by the council and staff, since they had neglected to inform me that they had come out of executive session. (Mayor Jason Buelterman has since apologized and said the city would be implementing policies to ensure such incidents do not occur again.)

Unfortunately, the motion before the final vote was not recorded. (City Clerk Jan LeViner said she was caught off guard and did not hit record in time.)

The recording picks up after Tom Groover made the motion and five of the council members voted, with three for the motion and two against. Wanda Doyle had still not voted either way.

City Attorney Bubba Hughes then goes on to explain that Doyle’s abstention would in fact be voting in the affirmative since a majority of the votes cast at that time were in favor of the motion.

There is a long silence after Hughes asked Doyle if her abstention was final.
While waiting, Hughes discusses Schleicher’s contract conditions and the legality of the vote taking place after executive session.

Groover gets frustrated with the discussion and delay. Then you can hear LeViner say that “she is really struggling,” in reference to Doyle.

Things then get pretty tense between Groover and Doyle, who raise their voices at one another a bit.

At the end, you can hear Councilman Bill Garbett say that it was one of the most upsetting meetings he had ever been to.